‘I’ve not smiled once in 15 years’

Sorrow appears to have tightened its grip on the household of Mrs Olayinka Taiwo, who now desperately seek solution to her health problem which, she said, had literally dragged her through hell in the past 15 years.

When she seemed resigning to fate over the cancer that has reduced her to an unsightly creature, ill-fate bore its fangs on her the harder way. Her children were thrown into the streets because she could no longer afford to house them.

Not only do her children lack the wherewithal to go to school, they now have to beg in the streets under scorching sun, to have a meal per day.

Within the last 15 years, Mrs Taiwo has remained helpless as the disease has spread all over her left eye. Now, she is a sorry figure. The helpless mother of four – one dead – said she had been bearing the excruciating pain all these past years, with no solution in sight.

Just a few years after the illness hooked Mrs Taiwo, her husband died after a brief illness. Before then, he had reportedly run from pillar to post, trying to seek solutions.

The death of her husband left him with the four children to cater for, as she grappled with her swollen eye. She picked up her cross and continued to bear the burden alone. Things worsened for her with the condition of the eye. She could no longer hawk yam – her only source of income – to earn a living.

Her situation got exacerbated as years rolled by. At certain times, she sought solution through queer means out of desperation. Sooner, she could not even afford the cost of treatment in any way.

Today, she daily traverses the streets of Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, where she lives, with her hapless children, begging for alms for survival, even as the infected left eye gets worse.

Mrs Taiwo, who said poverty had prevented relations from helping her and her kids, said that for the over 15 years that she had been battling the ailment, they had been living on begging. “We have been living on helps from those who feel touched by the condition of my eyes; they do give us money to eat,” she said.

Now, she needs money to do surgical operation on the eye for the 15-year pain to go.

To actualise that dream, she needs N5million. Thus, she appealed to public-spirited Nigerians and organisations to come to her aid.

She said: “I still believe that there are many God-sent individuals and organisations in this land that can make me smile again because I can’t remember a moment that I have smiled in the past 15 years since this problem began,” she said.

In tears, she added: This is why I opened a First Bank account with number: 3069978187 with the money I got from begging. I believe that whoever God wants to use for me can get his widow’s mite across to me through it.”